Ibrahima Wattara, commander of the National Liberation Front (FLN), talks at his militia headquarters in Sevare, Mali, in January. / George Henton for USA TODAY

by Clare Morgana Gillis, Special for USA TODAY

by Clare Morgana Gillis, Special for USA TODAY

NIAFUNKE, Mali - As French troops move rapidly through northern Mali in their fight to dislodge Islamist insurgents, they are finding many appreciative Malians along the way.

"The West calls them Islamists. They are not Islamists. They're just criminals," said Al-Hadji Yattara, a hotel owner in the town of Niafunke.

The French defense ministry said special forces on Friday seized the airport at Tessalit, a small town in Mali's Kidal region, and were moving to take the town itself with the help of troops from Chad.

French troops have encountered little resistance in the trek north since moving out of the city of Timbuktu, which the insurgents had made their capital. Many of the insurgents, militants aligned with al-Qaeda who spread south in recent months, are fleeing into the Sahara as they lose control of northern Mali's major cities.

In Niafunke, one of the towns liberated outside of Timbuktu, people were dancing in the streets one recent evening. "Mali! Mali! Mali!" cheered the few inhabitants who were still in Niafunke when the French arrived.

The people were celebrating Mali's win against South Africa in the African Cup soccer match, in a sign that things were returning to normal. They kicked up clouds of sand as they spun their motorcycles in circles. Music rang out from cellphones in this the hometown of Ali Farka Toure, one of Africa's most famous musicians. Music was banned by the Islamists, who took the city in April.

People were also playing snippets of a speech by French President Francois Hollande, who visited Timbuktu to vow that France would not let the country fall to the insurgents.

The insurgents made Timbuktu their capital last year after they overran Mali's government forces. The city, along with the rest of northern Mali, endured nine months of destruction, chaos and harsh implementation of sharia law brought by the insurgents, a mix of Tuareg separatists and Islamic fundamentalists.

Operation Serval, launched by the French army on Jan. 11, has returned nearly all the north's cities to Malian government control. After taking the airport in Tessalit near the Algerian border on Friday, French forces were fighting this weekend to secure the town.

France says it will soon begin handing over its 4-week-old military operation to the Malian army and African forces. But the Malian army may not be ready to take control, and a battle in liberated areas between rival Malian military units on Friday added emphasis to that risk.

The battles have also exposed racial tensions between the mainly black African south and the Tuareg north, where some are of Arab origin. According to Human Rights Watch, the Malian army is responsible for the execution of dozens of Tuareg civilians in Mopti, which was the dividing line between the government and the insurgents.

Yattara stayed in Niafunke despite his family's pleas to flee with them to the Mali capital of Bamako when the insurgents arrived. Because he sold alcohol in his hotel, he received 40 lashes from the insurgents who immediately began enforcing sharia law.

"But they smoke hashish in the desert sun all day," he said. "They are not Islamists. They are just Tuaregs who grew beards and cut their pants short, and they wanted to make the people afraid."

Ibrahima Wattara, leader of a volunteer militia calling itself National Liberation Front, agreed that the Tuaregs were nothing but thugs.

"They came to make trouble so that they could profit from the drug trade. They don't do it for religion," he said at a training camp in Sevare, near the French military base in the south, where his militia trains while awaiting authorization from the Malian army to move out.

"They cut people's hands off to make them afraid. They destroyed the banks, the police stations, everything," he said. "They didn't come to make a government. When terrorists do things like this, it's for their own profit."

The drug trade thrives throughout this area known as the Sahel region, a vast and lawless band of the Sahara desert that crosses the borders of a number of West African countries. The trade originates in Guinea-Bissau, a small nation on the Atlantic coast whose government was toppled by its military last year. South American drug lords, seeking new routes for drugs into Europe, employ the Tuaregs and their "black slaves" for their knowledge of desert smuggling routes, locals say.

"They inject the kids with drugs to make them follow their orders," said Moussa Sidibe, a captain in the National Liberation Front.

Sidibe said one of the other men in the militia went to visit his mother in Konna, a town to the north taken by the insurgents last month, and saw them injecting the children. Syringes were all over the ground, he said.

"Most children have now run away from the jihadists, but the ones who follow them for money have stayed," Sidibe said.

The Mali insurgency began in early 2012 when Tuareg group MNLA launched a rebellion in the north to win independence from the south. Islamist insurgents joined the MNLA and both seized control of the north after a coup in Bamako in March left the countries military forces in disarray. Then the MNLA was pushed aside by the Islamists.

Many of the insurgents were paid mercenaries fighting on the side of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. When that fight ended, the Tuaregs returned to Mali with Libyan weapons.